Ending Homelessness Today — Veterans

Our increasingly popular National Conference on Ending Homelessness is coming up in a few weeks, and this year we’re including some fantastic content on addressing veteran homelessness. The veterans workshop track (see the conference agenda here) will cover a variety of topics, from working with your local VA Medical Centers, utilizing HUD-VASH, making the most of your SSVF grants, and of course, how we are going to end veteran homelessness by the end of 2015.

There are numerous initiatives taking place around veteran homelessness, including the 25 Cities initiative, the Mayors Challenge, and others. At the Conference, our workshops and discussions will focus on how you can make the most of these initiatives in your communities, but we’ll also be discussing how to move the needle on veteran homelessness even if your community isn’t involved in these initiatives.

In fact, in addition to our workshop content, we’ll be holding a BYOB (Bring Your Own Breakfast, of course) discussion around what your community should be doing to address veteran homelessness and bring the number down to zero. The discussion with Alliance and VA staff will be a casual “rap session” on some concrete steps you can take when you get home and what opportunities are coming up to take advantage of federal funds.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been getting a lot of attention recently and not the good kind. But the VA has been doing good work on at least one issue that deserves more attention: veteran homelessness. Last week, the White House announced the Mayor’s Challenge, but that comes on the heels of years of decreases in veteran homelessness with strategic investments made by VA in rapid re-housing and permanent supportive housing in the SSVF and HUD-VASH programs.

The Alliance’s recent report, State of Homelessness in America 2014, found that the national rate of veteran homelessness fell to 27 homeless veterans per 10,000 veterans in the general population from 29 homeless veterans per 10,000. It also examined state level trends in veteran homelessness.

I’m more hopeful all the time that, by the end of 2015, the number of veterans who are homeless will be strikingly low. Yesterday I had the honor of participating in an event at the White House that I believe marked the beginning of the final push to end veteran homelessness. At the event, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness.

I had never seen Michelle Obama speak in person before. Now that I have, it’s clear to me that she will be a powerful and persuasive voice for this effort. (Video of the announcement is embedded at the top.) She spoke not just about the “moral outrage” of tens of thousands of veterans being homeless, but also about all the progress we have already made toward what she called the audacious but achievable goal of ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015.

Mayors, she said, “are best equipped to tackle this challenge because they know their communities inside and out, and they’re in touch with service providers who know these veterans by name.” During her speech, she announced the commitment of 77 mayors, four governors, and four county officials to meet that goal, and called on other mayors and local leaders to make the same commitment.

Here’s some more evidence that providing Housing First to homeless people works. As you may already be aware, between 2010 and 2013, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness on a single night in January decreased by 24 percent, going from 76,329 to 57,849. That reduction in veteran homelessness occurred in the midst of the Great Recession, an affordable housing crisis (which is still going on, by the way) and about 46.5 million people living in poverty.

How could this happen? Part of the answer is that the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) devoted more resources to ending veteran homelessness. Another other part is VA adopted the Housing First approach.

Did you know that 5.6 million veterans live in rural areas of the U.S.? That represents nearly a quarter of all veterans. And the majority of veterans in rural America are age 55 or older. That’s according the Housing Assistance Council’s (HAC) recent report, “From Service to Shelter: Housing Veterans in Rural America.” The report also talked about challenges for younger rural veterans, poverty, and housing affordability, but the findings on older rural veterans caught my attention:

Today the Alliance has put up the website our “veterans surge” map. The map shows the 78 communities that are eligible to receive extra funding from VA’s SSVF program, to create a “surge” of rapid re-housing with the goal of quickly reducing the number of homeless veterans to zero by the end of 2015.

By clicking on the flag in each community, you can get information about the number of homeless veterans in that community during the 2011 and 2013 Point-In-Time Counts, the amount of “surge” funding, and the number of homeless veterans they will need to reach each year in order to get to zero in time for the January, 2016 point-in-time count.

The Administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2015Budget Proposal, released on Tuesday, March 4, proposes, among other things, significant new resources for homelessness programs, including a $200 million increase for a program that serves homeless veterans and their families. If Congress enacts these budget requests, communities will get the resources they will need to meet the goals of ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015, and ending chronic homelessness by the end of 2016.

Here is a quick rundown of what we should be able to accomplish with these funding increases and the tough work communities around the country will have to undertake.

The 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress released last December reported that veteran homelessness had declined by 8 percent between 2012 and 2013 and by 24 percent since 2009. Nevertheless, communities still have a lot of work ahead of them to meet the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) goal of ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015.

Now, the VA is providing assistance to communities by expanding the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program, which provides prevention and rapid re-housing services for veteran families.

That’s great news. Since the end of Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), many communities have struggled to fund the same level of rapid re-housing services that they provided when they were receiving funding through under HPRP. The expansion of SSVF means that communities will now be able to increase rapid re-housing resources by drawing on SSVF funds.

As part of the Alliance’s Never Another Homeless Veteran Campaign, we have put together this Frequently Asked Questions resource that answers some fundamental questions about the fight to end veteran homelessness. If you want to join the fight, please add your name to the Alliance’s Never Another Homelessness statement!

If you’ve been paying attention to the reports, you’ll already know that Phoenix says its ended chronic veteran homelessness, and Salt Lake City says it’s not far behind. Now, just last week Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges announced that they’re partnering to finish the job of ending veteran homelessness in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

It’s not all that surprising, given the tremendous political will and federal resources behind it, that the fight to end veteran homelessness has gathered so much momentum. But it is very exciting, and Minnesota is very close. Last year, volunteers counted just 349 homeless veterans in the state of Minnesota during the 2013 Point-In-Time Count, 200 of them in the Twin Cities.

Rental assistance helps about 340,000 veterans afford decent homes and has been central to recent reductions in homelessness among veterans, as I wrote in a recent report. The HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing voucher program (HUD-VASH), which targets chronically homeless veterans and combines rental assistance with VA supportive services, helps more than 40,000 veterans. Many more veterans get rental assistance through mainstream programs that don’t specifically target them, such as Housing Choice Vouchers, project-based rental assistance, and public housing.

Last month the mayor of Phoenix announced his city had reached a goal that many thought was impossible to reach. His city has ended chronic veteran homelessness. And now Salt Lake City is close behind. This month Salt Lake City's Mayor Ralph Becker said on the Melissa Harris Perry show that his city is down to just eight homeless veterans. The mayors of both these fine cities are in a friendly competition to tackle the issue of veteran homelessness, and they're both winning. How are they doing it?

Anyone who follows the work of the Alliance knows how it’s done: you work together as a community, coordinate services and programs, provide housing first, and then needed services. This is exactly what Phoenix and Salt Lake are doing. They are using fully-funded VA and HUD programs in concert with local resources and proper targeting to get those veterans with the most difficult issues of the streets first. These cities are well on their way to meeting goal of ending veteran homelessness by 2015.

We will act to secure resources, educate officials, and contribute to the ongoing efforts by private and nonprofit organizations to guarantee that there is never another homeless veteran.

That’s the fourth part of the statement that thousands of people have already signed, as part of the Never Another Homeless Veteran campaign. (You can add your name to the campaign too.) The most common question we get, particularly from people who are new to the issue, is, “What can I do to make a real difference?” In this post I’ll suggest some actions that people can take, including people who aren’t involved in the issue on a day to day basis.

Back in 2010, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki, along with his federal partners, launched a plan to end homelessness among veterans by the end of 2015. And believe it or not, we’re getting there. The most recently released numbers on veteran homelessness show that there has been a 24 percent decrease in veteran homelessness since then.

This kind of significant progress is due in large part to the federal investment from both Congress and the Administration in preventative measures, better connections to housing and employment, and increased involvement in the homelessness system at the local level.

If you are a homeless service provider, KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! On the whole, what we are doing nationally, is working! According to volume 1 of the 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report that the Department of Housing and Urban Development released today, overall homelessness decreased nearly 4 percent from 2012 to 2013. Nearly 25,000 more people were homeless on one night in January 2012 than in January 2013. In fact, homelessness decreased in all of the major subpopulations of note from 2012 to 2013: people in families, unsheltered people, veterans, individuals, and chronically homeless individuals.

Like many people who work in the homeless assistance field, Leon Winston had his own personal experience with homelessness and hardship. He was homeless himself, more than once, and a veteran. Now he is chief operating officer and housing director at Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit that serves homeless veterans in the San Francisco area. Today, as part of our Never Another Homeless Veteran Campaign, we’re sharing his remarkable story of how he got there, in his own words.

His story is unusual, but we believe it’s emblematic of the commitment we need from the public and our elected officials if we are to end veteran homelessness. That’s why the Alliance awarded him our Veterans Champion Award. And it was his kind of commitment we had in mind when we drafted the Never Another Homeless Veteran statement.

In 2011, about 5.2 million veteran-headed households spent over 30 percent of their income on housing costs. And about a quarter of those households spent more than half of their income on housing costs.

Today the National Low Income Housing Coalition released Housing Instability among Our Veterans, a report showing characteristics and housings needs of veterans. The report shows that veterans who are racial minorities, females, who have a disability, and who served after September 11, 2011 have the greatest housing cost burden, placing them at risk of homelessness. Here are some of the other key findings.

Last week, I was humbled to stand among some of the most inspiring leaders fighting to end veterans’ homelessness.

I was proud to stand beside Alliance President and CEO Nan Roman to ask all Americans to sign a statement first to recognize that there are veterans, more than 60,000 in fact, who are homeless. These veterans sacrificed of themselves for the larger community, but they've returned and we don't have a place for them. In addition to raising awareness, we also ask you to sign to commit to telling others about the problem and to being a part of the solution.

Did you know that on any given night, 62,619 U.S. veterans are homeless? Veterans make up 7 percent of the general population, but they make up almost 10 percent of the entire homeless population, and they make up a disproportionate percentage of those who are chronically homeless (people who spend years on the streets because of physical disability, mental illness, or addiction).

That's why the Alliance has partnered with The Home Depot Foundation for The Never Another Homeless Veteran education campaign. It's a two-year effort by the Alliance and its partners to build and leverage public support to end veteran homelessness. If you're friends with a veteran, if you have a veteran in your family, if you're a veteran yourself, or if you care about ending veteran homelessness (and honestly, who doesn't fall into at least one of those categories?) you can join the thousands who have already signed on to the campaign by adding your name to the Never Another Homeless Veteran statement.

The VA has set the ambitious goal of ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015 and Congress has responded by funding resources to meet that goal. One of the largest components of the federal government’s efforts to meet that goal is the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program. Communities are using two different approaches to implement the program and, according to a new study, one of these approaches is performing significantly better.

The HUD-VASH program provides permanent supportive housing to homeless veterans and their families. It’s designed to target individuals and families who have the most intensive and long-term needs. Here’s a look at the recent study that compares two different approaches that communities are using. The study is titled, “Housing Chronically Homeless Veterans: Evaluating the Efficacy of a Housing First Approach to HUD-VASH,” and the two approaches it looks at are:

The “Housing First” model, which prioritizes housing placement and stability with voluntary service participation; and

The “housing ready” approach, the usual treatment model that may require participants to maintain sobriety or enroll in treatment programs as a condition for housing.